Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

With the supposed XDK image leak, in the docs it does say "Always on, always connected" this does not exactly scream to me that this is required for ownership. Says that it will always maintain a network connection, just like Windows will if I allow it. So I have to guess this will be the same, and not the dreaded required for use. Just my take on the wording though.

 

Yukon is dead in the water, and I really do not think the specs are going to change much from last year, they were targeting 800mhz then and there has to be a reason for that, maybe they have a bit of headroom but it seems like the norm for this is that it goes down not up, we will see.

 

Yeah, I really don't think they're going to change - we haven't actually had any rumours saying that MS have upped the specs from what vgleaks have - all talk of overclocking, more powerful chip designs developed in parallel etc. is just fanboy speculation.

MS can compete with PS4 on price, Kinect and Win8 integration - not power.

 

Which is kinda sad...

 

Yeah, I jumped ship from PS to Xbox 1 as it was the most powerful console, now it looks like the opposite is true so i'll be returning to the PS camp (always online and no used games doesn't help either)

 

GPU alone of course, this is an entry level card here.

 

The goal of a console has never been to make it as powerful as possible though, there are always budget constraints that PCs don't have.

 

VGLeaks just dropped us another gift: http://www.vgleaks.com/durango-xdk/

That last screen (if true) confirms a few things:

1) It's more powerful than the 360 (obviously)
2) Kinect v2 included in every system, required for the system to work.
3) System has several power states and the system is "always on", such that it will provide updates to games when the system is not in use.
4) Every system will have a hard drive.
5) The system will come with a Blu-ray drive.
6) Games must be installed before they can be played. The optical drive is NOT used to play games.
7) Related to point 6, a user will be able to play a game while it is being installed.
8) There will be changes to the controller to make it appeal to the noncore gamer (we have no idea what that means, but lets not assume the worst).

Discuss!

 

it's speculation and fanboy too, sure, but it's not entirely unreasonable at all.

If ms thinks power is relevant, and there's a good chance they do, they quite reasonably may look to make upgrades where they can. This is not happening in a vacuum, PS4 changing to 8gb was a potential catalyst.

Mark Rein seems to think so. And he does have a history with MS.

 

Difference is we have no idea how long Sony might have been trying to make 8GB GDDR5 feasible, whereas the reaction time to improving Durango after the PS4 launch event is much shorter. Besides, if anything, Durango is supposedly lacking in raw GPU performance, not RAM amount or type (and there's no way that's changing). Plus, specs of a 1.84TFLOP system have been floating around the Internet since last summer, if Microsoft wanted to react, it could have done so then.

For Microsoft, if they really want to reach a broad market without making a $499 base SKU machine, they can't be just be reacting to what Sony is doing. That's an easy way to screw up a system launch.

 

Aside from clock bumps up and down (yields, thermals and cooling permitting) what else can they really do? I was under the impression that any changes this late into the game for a Christmas / holiday this year launch would probably cause a delay?.

 

Aren't a lot of our tvs and computers and other internet capable devices more or less already always connected to the internet? Is the sky is falling stuff really all that necessary? Did it say that you won't be able to play games without an internet connection? I don't think it did. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. We aren't there yet. The nerve that they would try to simplify and improve the user experience as it relates to system updates, or how bizarre it must be that they'll try to have a seamlessly connected experience.

I more or less consider my current 360 always connected, since I literally never use it without it being connected to the internet, and I doubt most people here that own a 360 or PS3 do either. Would I like the choice of being able to do so just in case? Certainly. And used games? A non issue for me. I've only purchased one used game in my life and that was on a whim because the store was out of new copies that I could buy and I was desperate to go home and start playing that very day.

And what's the opposition with Kinect... If you hate it so much, how about not using it all that much. Do you tend to care about the HDMI cable after you connect it to your TV and the box of your console? Connect the damn Kinect and then just don't use it if you don't want to. If it helps any, think of it like plugging in your console to an outlet. You can't play unless you plug it in.

That aside, I guess early on going for what you think is the most powerful console seems safe enough, but I'll probably get all 3 (Wii-U included) and then whichever platform ends up having most of the games that I want to play, will become my main system. I'm not getting all 3 because I just want to have them all for the sake of having them, but because there are games that will only be appearing on each that I refuse to be without.

 

they can't do much. But nobody knows the details of what things are since last year. So in that amount of time, things can change somewhat.

 

always on, always connect is a feature they put in phones so you get all your social updates while on idle. It will probably be a feature that isn't forced when gaming. I would imagine it doesn't end up being an online only console.

 

Chip really needed to have been signed off before the end of last year. Plus, shipping before Black Friday in quantity has always been a higher priority than being more powerful. There will be nothing worse for Microsoft than having 5 million PS4s sold in 2013 and only 1 million 720s because of supply constraints.

 

Truth is if the nextgen Gears, Halo and Alan Wake get a very sizable leap in graphics then I honestly don't care if it's still a 1.2tf xbox, will get it on launch non the less. The always online part is a very bitter pill to swallow though.

 

This is strangely turning into a real mystery.

Mark Rein wouldn't be playing the "pretend not to know" card, he's always been very direct in his statements. And yet AGAIN, here's another developer (and the list keeps growing) who sounds like he's waiting to find out what Microsoft will do.

And why would Microsoft be trying so hard to maintain a black hole of secrecy around Durango with developers? That doesn't make any sense.

 

I consider the "always on, always connected" line to mean, compared to the current 360 and PS3, you will be able to tell your system to download/cache something from the Internet like a game demo or movie and have your system turn itself on, instead of needing to be in your home and turning the system on yourself. And anyone who's owned a PS3 and doesn't have PS+ knows how terribly long it takes for the system to download and install a patch for a game or the system firmware.

 

What if people wanna bring it to somewhere that doesn't have broadband, or having ISP maintenance or simply don't have the internet? I know those are the minority but you can't rule them out just yet.

 

Same as the current 360/PS3? No Internet, no patches and you play offline?